


oof, summer, huh?

by transbigbird



Category: Final Space (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Hot Weather, M/M, anyway gary avocato and quinn are all married and love lil cato as a son, hghghhghghg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 22:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14578920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transbigbird/pseuds/transbigbird
Summary: Not having a working air conditioner with triple digit temperatures, as Quinn says, "sucks."





	oof, summer, huh?

**Author's Note:**

> i love suffering about my bad writing and trying to write domestic shit using that bad writing

“Gary?” A voice came from above Gary’s head, tired but awake, powered by the lazy streams of sunlight through the window blinds. Gary sighs, his breath landing on warm, brown skin. He still wants to pretend like the sun hadn’t woken him up yet.

“Hey, yo.” It was another voice, more behind him than on top. A little rougher and a little more tired, but still more awake than he wants to be. Maybe his back burns from heat but darn it, he wants five more minutes of enjoying where he was.

Something shifts under his neck, but Gary presses it into the sheets and it stops.

“ _ Gary _ .” It was the first voice again, softer. Gary hums in response. They were smart. They knew he was awake the whole time, anyway.

“Yeah?” Gary looks up from where he’s tucked into himself. The first thing he saw were dark brown eyes, reflecting yellow light and blue wallpaper. Quinn. When she notices that he finally stopped pretending to be asleep, she stares at him for a moment. Smiling with her eyes half closed, she places her hand on his face.

“Oh, Gary. You know I love you, right?” Her whisper travels just far enough for him to hear it. Gary takes in a breath and  _ mm-hm _ s. The way Quinn looks at him drew warmth into chest, which felt nice. It wasn’t gross and sticky like the way his skin feels from the summer heat and a broken air conditioner. It was more refreshing, like the warmth from Quinn’s hand, even though it burns his skin more than it already does. 

“Good,” she says. She moves her head closer to where he’s lying next to her stomach. She has to bend her body over and Gary shifts upwards to make the stretch shorter. His back cools a little as it moves away from being curled against sweaty fur.

“Please remember that when I tell you to stop breathing on my fucking stomach.”

Gary blinks, surprise throwing energy into his sleepy body.

“Wh-”

“I can feel condensation on my skin, Gary.”

“I-”

“It’s very hot in here already.”

“Qui-”

“While you’re at it, get him off my arm.”

“Avocato, this is my confrontation. Get out of here.”

Avocato shifts, pressing his stomach against Gary’s back in order to slug Quinn in the shoulder. His back warms up again. 

“He’s breathing on your stomach, but he’s also making my arm sweaty and numb with his dumb neck. I’d get out, but I’m stuck, so I want in on this confrontation.” 

Gary, although fully wake, seems very lost. 

“Okay. Okay. I’m-.” He squints at Quinn, confusion rolling off of him like steam. “I’m very not sure about what is happening right now.”

Quinn looks down at him again. She jokingly rolls her eyes and poke him in the ribs.

“ _ Sweetheart _ , it’s gotta be a bajillion degrees in here and your breath is very, very warm on my already very, very warm stomach. Shift ya head up or turn it over.”

Gary blinks again and slowly turns his body from his side to his back, uncurling himself as he does. Facing Avocato, he flares out his hands in a  “okay, now what’s your deal?” sort of way.

Avocato raises his eyebrows and says, “I can’t feel my arm and my fur’s soaking up all the sweat from your dang head. Plus, you smoothed it out in the wrong direction moving around last night.”

Gary lifts his head off of Avocato’s arm, moves his body down the bed, and plops himself in the space between the two of them. The only contact the three of them had was one of Quinn’s knees on Gary’s hip, and his fingertips brushing Avocato’s thigh. A silence caused by the discomfort of heat settles in the air for a moment.

“Well, boys,” Quinn says as she sat up, silence broken, “this sucks. I’m gonna sit in front of a fan and think of every life decision I’ve made.” She slid off the bed and grabs a tank top off the ground.  As she opens the door and looks over her shoulder, she says, “If someone makes me iced tea I’ll marry them twice.” Then she left, presumably to dig a fan out of the garage, and shut the door. As soon as the door knob clicks, Gary scoots over to the left and steals Quinn’s space, lowering the amount of heat that radiates off of Avocato onto him.

“How are you not dying right now?” Gary asks. He hadn’t realized how hot it actually was snug between Quinn and Avocato until Quinn had gotten up and left. “I mean like, no offense, but you’re covered in, what, basically a  _ sweat cover _ and I’m just-”

“Gary.”

“It’s gotta b- Yeah?”

“I am not not dying. I am extra dying. I am the supreme ruler of dying right now. You are a peasant in my kingdom of dying, Gary.” The he rolls off the bed, thuds on the ground, grabs swim shorts from a drawer and also leaves the room. A minute later, the shower turns on. 

“Huh.” 

Gary stays in the bed for a while longer. He rubs his eyes, thinking about how wearing a binder right now was going to kind of be the worst possible outcome of the day. And then his eyes pop open when he remembers he’s been living with the same group of people for the past few years and that he goes to bed without a shirt half the time anyway and  _ hell yeah, this isn’t a secret! I’m gonna wear a t-shirt and suffer without dysphoria!  _

The impact of this thought, however, didn’t hit him until he got up to grab a shirt from the room’s “this might be clean” clothes pile. He held it out in front of him, notices it’s definitely Avocato’s and  _ that’s  _ when years worth of family actually hit him.

“Oh geez.” He held shirt closer to himself, and smiles such a big goofy smile. “I have a girlf- I have a  _ wife  _ and a  _ husband _ and a  _ kid,  _ oh  _ geez. _ ” He slips the shirt on, smile bigger now. “And they all like me!”

Before he goes to the kitchen, he peeks into the bathroom to check on Avocato. The curtain is drawn back and he’s sitting in the tub, arms draped and crossed over the walls. The tub was halfway full while the showerhead ran and his tails swishes underwater, his eyes closed.

“Avocato.”

“Mm.”

“Do you want iced tea?”

“Mmhm.”

“Are you just gonna sit in there?”

“Mmhm.”

“All day?”

“All day.”

“Huh.” Even though all day seems like a lot more than Avocato actually means, Gary walks in and kisses his forehead as a little “have fun in here anyway” gift. “Okay then.”

Walking into the living room, he saw saturday cartoons playing on the TV, and Quinn sharing a big box fan with Lil’ Cato, who was eating much more than one serving size of cereal, both on the floor. Lil’ Cato was staring at the TV, his back leaning against the couch. Quinn was pretending to do work, but she had her laptop with a blank document in front of her and she was also watching cartoons.

“Hey,” Gary says, passing behind them.

“Hey,” Quinn says, hands on her keyboard, eyes distracts.

“Morning, G-Man,” says Lil’ Cato, still watching the TV, “where’s dad?”

Gary walks into the kitchen and opens the tea drawer. “I think he’s turning the bathroom into his own water park.” He pulls a box of Quinn’s green tea from the back and put it on the counter. “He has swim shorts and everything.” He grabs the tea kettle from the bottom cabinet and fills it with water. “Hey, Lil’ Cato, do you want iced tea?” He starts to pull cups from the dishwasher, lining them up next to the stove

“Uhh, yeah, sure, thanks.”

“Extra honey still, right?”

“Hell yeah.”

Quinn, who does end up typing a sentence or two pipes in with a “language, Cato.”

Gary can hear Lil’ Cato sputter while he organizes the honey and lemons next to everything. “You said shit like five times when your laptop starting heating up!”

“Cato, you’re our kid and I love you but I can say ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ whenever I want.”

With a pout on his face, Lil’ Cato slides his bowl of cereal next to him, jumps up, and throws his fists in the air.

“IF MY MOM CAN SAY FUCK THEN SO CAN I. _ FUCK _ .”

Lil’ Cato’s shout rings through the house for a split second, before the shower turns off and Avocato’s voice came from the bathroom.

“QUINN’S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN LEGALLY SAY FUCK, SON.”

Soon after iced tea was distributed to Quinn and Lil’ Cato, with a kiss and a fistbump, respectively, Gary walks back to the bathroom. He has his and Avocato’s tea, plus a towel from the hallway closet.

This time around, Avocato has one leg hanging over the edge of the tub, another bent in the water, his torso submerged and his head under the falling water. His eyes were still closed and his tongue occasionally pokes out to lick water off his nose. Gary stands at the door for a moment, letting that image soak in before he knocks. Avocato pulls his leg from the tub wall and sits up, away from the shower head. He rubs the water from his eyes and looks up at Gary. 

“Oh. Hey, babe.”

Gary walks and hands Avocato his cup of tea. Avocato takes it in his hands, careful not to get water in the glass. Gary places the towel down on the ground and sits cross-legged, sipping his own tea.

“Quinn says we need to break down and actually get someone to fix the air conditioning, because our plan of getting over it hasn’t works in three days.” Gary crosses his arms over the tub and keeps talking. “If you’re gonna make the bathroom into a pool, you should be the guy who calls.”

Avocato leans towards Gary and sits his cup down.

“I’m not turning the  _ entire  _ bathroom into a pool. Just the tub.  _ You _ call. You’re the one who numbs up arms at night.” Gary laughs at that and splashes water onto Avocato. 

“At least I don’t make my husband’s back all sweaty just by hugging him. Like, hey, I’m hot enough all the time as it is, buddy. While you’re a good addition of hotness, I’m pretty sure I don’t need it, thanks.” Then it was Avocato’s turn to laugh and before it dies from his throat, he reaches out for Gary’s face and kisses him. His fur was wet from the water and his paw pads were a little wrinklier than usual, but they still smooth down Gary’s cheeks like they always do. The little drops of water on his skin was what made him sink into the kiss more than he might have most days. 

“We still need someone to call though,” says Gary, pulling away. “Quinn refuses to touch anything and I have phone anxiety so really? You’re our last bet.” Avocato rolls his eyes and flicks his tongue. 

“Make Lil’ Cato do it. He’s old enough.” Gary shakes his head, takes a sip from his tea.

“Absolutely not. It’s the weekend which means he’s forcing us, and by us I mean  _ me _ , to play video games later and he  _ will  _ use a phone call against me, Avocato.” He drags a hand over his face. “Never,  _ ever _ , will I know death more than I will then.”

Avocato sinks back to the position he was in when Gary stopped by, a chuckle under his breath. 

“Gary, Gary, Gary. I already told you.  _ I’m _ the supreme ruler of dying right now. You know me very well. Now go tell our boy to make a phone call  _ and then wreck his shit at Mario Kart. _ ”

Gary, did not, in fact, wreck Lil’ Cato’s shit at Mario Kart.

After the sky started getting dark around 8PM, Avocato was coaxed out of not blowing up the water bill, Quinn drank at least a gallon of sweet tea, and Lil’ Cato unwrecked Gary by making origami dinosaurs with him, Gary had gathered up his family in the living room and told them they were all gonna watch a movie, whether they wanted to or not.

In order to get them to Avocato to stay, he found an empty spray bottle under the bathroom sink and filedl it with water. He made Quinn a tea slushie from some he froze in the morning, and Lil’ Cato didn’t need convincing, but Gary gave him a soda he’d been saving and a forgotten popsicle from the back of the freezer, plus the power to pick a movie.

Avocato sat on the couch, Quinn sitting between his legs on the ground. He braided her hair, and occasionally spritzed himself with water, as she sat in front of the fan the entire movie. Gary took the rest of the couch, leaning his head on the arm of it and his legs in Avocato’s lap. Lil’ Cato first sprawled on the ground next to Quinn, but eventually migrated with his head on a pillow in her lap. Her legs felt gross under the cloth but with the fan on, she guessed  _ okay, I can allow this just this once. _

The movie wasn’t particularly exciting and only Gary and Lil’ Cato really paid attention to it, but by the time the credits rolled, everyone had come to a silent understanding that having sat there for two hours had been less about the film and more about gathering in one spot and enjoying each other’s company for a moment.

“Okay,” Quinn says, fists on her hips. “Boys, we need a plan. Cato has the fan for the night and you-” she points to Avocato, “- radiate heat like a fucking nuke, which sucks because I, surprise surprise, love you and wish you didn’t.” She points to Gary and squints. “Got any ideas, pretty boy?” 

Gary thinks for a moment, tries to come up with something.

“We could keep the windows open tonight? I have a bug screen we can put on it.” Quinn thinks, then shakes her head.

“It’s a good concept but that just mean that we’ll get direct sunlight and heat in the morning, instead of it filtering through the glass. Avocato?” She shifts from one leg to another.

“We could you those cold bags from Lil’ Cato’s lunch box.” He wipes moisture away from the insides of his fingers. “They’ll only have been in the fridge, but still cold.”

Quinn tries to remember how big they are by making a rectangle with her hands. “Those might be too small. Plus, there’s only two, which leaves one person out. Next?” 

Gary shoots his hand in the air. “We could dunk our clothes in cold water and ring them out! That way they’re only a little wet, but still cold.”

“Hm. Maybe. It might be uncomfortable though, especially on these bed sheets.” Quinn scratches her forehead. “Let’s make that Plan B. Back to you, Avo-buddy.”

Avocato has to think longer than before, starting to get sleepy from the dark and the heat. “I could try to rig up our winter heater to do cold air, that might work.”

Quinn sits on the suggestion for a second. “That’s definitely a good idea, but I think it’s too late to do it right now. Maybe tomorrow, though. Your turn, Gary.”

“Uhhh.” He flips his head back to face the ceiling. “Okay I’m really tired, let’s just sleep on the floor? Like, okay,” he drops his head to point on the ground, “it’s, what, scientifically proven the floor is colder? And the sun won’t heat it up in the morning either. It would solve our  _ quote unquote _ ‘Avocato problems,’ too.”

Quinn thinks, hand on her chin. 

“I mean.” She sighs. “I don’t have any better ideas. Avocato?” Avocato shakes his head, already lowering himself on the ground to the right of the bed. “Alright then. Well, Gary, looks like it’s the floor, sweetheart.” Gary shrugs, kicking some clothes on the floor into a vaguely pillow-esque shape at the foot of the bed. Quinn shakes her head as she grabs an actual pillow from the it. She turns the room light off and lays on the ground, next to the “these are definitely clean, we just keep forgetting to put them up” clothes pile on the left. 

When all three of them eventually wake up in the morning on the bed, sweaty and gross again, they happen to forget where they all fell asleep the night before.

**Author's Note:**

> folks this entire thing was me throwing stuff in a google doc and hoping for the best trying to meet a word count goal. i failed. this took me 8 hours to fail. luv you.
> 
> find me @ transbigbird on tumblr!


End file.
